Photo by Episcopal Diocese of Southwest Florida

By Joy Wong

Gender stereotypes pertaining to women have often been upsetting to me, especially in the ways that I did not fit into them. I distinctly remember a time when a male elder in our church said something to the effect that “all women were talkative and gossipy” and I was highly offended — especially because I myself am quite the opposite. In fact, most of our friends know that my husband is the more talkative one, and more interested in gossip too! In jest, I often dub him as a “gossip boy,” my spin on the coined term “gossip girl.”

I also remember reading John Gray’s famous book, Men are From Mars, Women are from Venus, and thinking to myself, Why does it seem like I’m a woman from Mars? Gray talks about how men need to go to their “cave” to process things while women need to talk out their feelings. Again, I defied this stereotype, often needing to hide in my own “cave” while finding that many of my male friends needed to talk things out much more than I did. (Later I discovered that my need for my “cave” had to do with my extreme introversion, more than me being female.)

I suppose it doesn’t help that my interests have led me to study theology, where most of the students are men. Interestingly enough, my mother also suffered from gender discrimination in her day. She received her college entrance exam score late, because having scored the highest on the exam, her scores were sent to the boys’ schools in error (my mother’s Chinese name is gender neutral). It was only later that they realized that the highest scoring student was a girl!

While I’ve been angered by such discrimination and stereotypes, I also — at times — employ them. Once, at a church leadership event, we were split into teams and asked to build a model of the Old Testament tabernacle using provided craft materials. My team did exceptionally well, and when a pastor came by to ask my opinion as to why we did well, I answered, “Maybe because our team was made up of all women.” (My answer at that time was not in reference to our skills, but to how well we worked together.) Without realizing it, I was generalizing all women as harmonious workers.

Furthermore, my desire to seek Asian American women mentors and even in administrating this blog representing Asian American women in ministry demonstrates my belief that there is something unique about being not only Asian American, but also being a woman — so much so that there are things in the way that we think, operate, experience things, and ultimately, lead, that are very different from others who are not Asian American, and not female.

So it is with these confusing and mixed feelings and experiences about gender and gender stereotypes that I began reading about the need to name a Yinist theology — an Asian American women’s theology, separate from feminist (white women), womanist (African American women), and mujerista (Hispanic women) theologies. Because I feel confused about how to talk about gender, I often try not to talk about it. But in her recent book, Young Lee Hertig wisely points out that “to remain nameless is to remain invisible and voiceless at the table and to be submerged among others’ names. There is power in naming one’s reality, which then allows us to engage in discourse at the table” (Hertig, The Tao of Asian American Belonging: A Yinist Spirituality, ix).

Indeed, while I’ve only just begun the book, the power of naming already has effect. By naming the Asian American women at the table of theological discourse as Yinist, it begs the question, Who are the others at this table? It forces others to also identify their ethnicity and gender, acknowledging the lens through which they form their own theological viewpoints. Furthermore, it immediately highlights the fact that the bulk of those at the table are white males; and without having named themselves, their theologies have dominated the evangelical theology of our nation, often without acknowledging the effect that being white and male may have on their theologies. In essence, white male theology has been passed off as standard “evangelical theology.”

So no matter my feelings on gender and gender stereotypes, the solution is not to skirt the issue. Having previously experienced the power of articulating experiences and feelings that I could not verbalize, I believe that to move forward in understanding my experience (often dissonance) of being an Asian American woman in ministry in this country and beyond, I — no, we — must be named. And so I proceed… and I hope you will join me too!

Joy Wong has an MDiv from Fuller Theological Seminary, a BA in English from Princeton University, as well as four years’ experience in industrial distribution management.  She is a contributing author to Mirrored Reflections: Reframing Biblical Characters, published in September 2010.